Tag Archives: Amazon.com

I won’t be hiding this emails address since I think people should know about this. There are two things to know about receiving scam emails from people trying to impersonate a well known organization like Amazon. Official Amazon email address despite the country, for an order confirmation and bogus email address. ALWAYS read the email address NOT the sender name!!

auto-confirm@amazon.com
REAL email address. Sender name will be auto-confirm@amazon.com with an email title: Your Order with Amazon.com

auto-confirm1116@amazon.co.uk
anything with a number after auto-confirm or letters is a scammer. Anything that says amazon@gmail.com or hotmail, is a scammer. Anything that sounds official but ends in @yahoo.com is a scammer trying to impersonate amazon. So be very careful and never reply!

Next thing to look out for in this bogus email is a zip file. In this zip file is an exe file. DO NOT RUN THIS! No exceptions! It will be called something like Order Information, Recipt or something stupid like that. This is a program. NO shop will ever send you order information in the form of a program. It is most likely a virus or worm with the intent to gain your personal information or destroy your PC. DO NOT run it! All of Amazons order information should be in your email appearing like this below and if Amazon does send you an attachment it will be a safe PDF of document file. Never an executable file (exe)!

So, your proper Amazon confirmation order (if you even ordered anything at all) should look something like this. I’ve blurred my personal details. Further down this email is details and information on what I ordered, when I ordered but I couldn’t screen cap all of the Amazon email:

Not like this!

Notice a few major differences in the fake email.

No official logo.

No addressing you by your first or full name that is registered with Amazon.

No receipt.

No order details except for a fake item number.

No mention of the shipping method.

No information on the order you supposedly ordered.

No estimated delivery time.

No information about the store on amazon you bought from eg. Sold by: __________

Not as many strong uses of paragraphs like an actual Amazon order would have on order details.

No coupons or deals on offer.

No amount spent.

No mention of your address like in the official Amazon email receipt.

No links on where to change your order details. Unlike the official Amazon email.

An attached file. Amazon doesn’t seem to attach files any more, probably due to this very issue.

No information about not replying to this email. Real Amazon auto-confirm generally has a little disclaimer about not replying as no one will read it because it is fully automated and the inbox is not checked.

No view cart, wishlist, order or help links.

Different font

Partial colour scheme to an Amazon order.

As you can see, there is quite a difference between a real email from Amazon and a fake one from either a scammer or some douche bag sending out viruses to random people on the net. More than likely it’s a virus to obtain personal information though I am not about to run it and find out. I will however after this post, be reporting it directly to Amazon.

If you get these emails, mark it as a phising scam. Do not reply. Do not reply because then they will also know that their email has been sent to a real person and they may try to persuade you to giving personal information. It is sometimes known as a confidence trick. They may even threaten you with legal action in a vain attempt to impersonate someone official. Legal action they may try to bring up would be debt collection. But they can’t do anything since what they are doing is illegal. The next step you can take is to then report the fake scammer email to Amazon.com and let them know about the issue.

Not all scammers are this lazy though. Some will take an order receipt and try to photoshop it to look offical but their email is what gives them away each and every time. This trick is often used with Paypal and unfortunately people fall for it. So in future if it feels suspicious, it probably is and always. always, always, read the full email link and compare to the original.